“I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.”

“My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation.”

“Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.”

“I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.”

“Does it not occur to people that I might be artificial by nature?”